Notebook: Phantoms' Murray back in the organization

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2012, file photo, NHL hockey commissioner Gary Bettman listens as he meets with reporters after a meeting with team owners, in New York. The NHL locked out its players at midnight Saturday, becoming the third major sports league to impose a work stoppage in the last 18 months. The action also marks the fourth shutdown for the NHL since 1992, including a year-long dispute that forced the cancellation of the entire 2004-05 season when the league held out for a salary cap. The deal which ended that dispute expired at midnight, and Commissioner Gary Bettman followed through on his longstanding pledge to lock out the players with no new agreement in place. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Back in the American Hockey League and right back to his odd connection between being part of Philadelphia’s hockey club with a front-row seat to a hockey labor war. Only this time, Murray will be able to stay busy while watchingfrom the sidelines.

“At this time of the year this is what we’re supposed to do,” said Murray, the longtime NHL coach who nearly won a Stanley Cup in Philadelphia and this year will be trying to win a Calder Cup with a few Flyers players dressed in Adirondack Phantoms uniforms.

“We’re coaches,” Murray said as the Phantoms opened training camp at the Skate Zone. “We’re looking forward to getting into training camp and getting started. I’m fortunate that I’m able to do that. There’s a lot of guys sitting out there wishing they were able to do the same.”

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Among them is Peter Laviolette, who during a golf outing with Murray recently started forming an alliance as organizational head coaches. But while the powers-that-don’t-see in the NHL have resumed meeting again to exchange Manhattan lunch menus, Laviolette is biding his time as a Flyers coach doing what he was doing at the Skate Zone Saturday...

Standing on a balcony overseeing Murray oversee a hockey practice.

Can it be 18 years since Murray was in a similar position?

Just as he’s returned to Philadelphia as a new head hockey coach in 2010 — albeit temporarily, just for a Phantoms camp — Murray was a new head coach for the Flyers in the fall of 1994, when a labor action resulted in the NHL’s first lockout.

“It was a full training camp, then a 48-game sprint that season,” Murray said. But he remembers the intervening three months of inactivity, which did nothing to prevent another lockout 10 years after that and now another one eight years further down the road.

“It’s not a good feeling,” said Murray, 62, who has also been a head coach in Washington and Los Angeles, and at various stages has served as player, scout, assistant coach and head coach for the Flyers.

“From the personal side of it, you’re real excited about coming to the Flyers, a team you played for. You’re looking forward to getting your hands on it and putting your imprint on a team that hadn’t been to the playoffs in five years. Then all of a sudden you get 27 days, 28 days (into training camp) and now it hits the wall and you’re sitting there wondering what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“I went to the office every day, watched some video, read a lot of books ... I think that’s when I learned to play golf. When you’re a hockey player and a hockey coach, hockey is your life. You want to get at the game whenever the seasons change. Unfortunately, that’s where it’s at again.”

When that first lockout did end, a trade with Montreal that brought John LeClair and Eric Desjardins was a springboard to a run to the 1995 Eastern Conference finals and ultimately the 1997 Stanley Cup finals ... and a four-straight loss to Detroit that set the stage for Murray’s sudden dismissal as coach.

Since then, he’s returned to the Flyers organization what, two or three times? One of those was as a scout ... in time to see the 2004-05 lockout.

When it comes to being part of the Flyers organization, Terry Murray can never be surprised about what happens next.

“It always works out,” Murray said. “Things get settled. It’ll happen again this time. We’ll get back at it.”

Until they do, Murray will have the pleasure to coach some of the Flyers’ best young players, including Brayden Schenn, Sean Couturier and Eric Wellwood, a young prospect who already has a mature view of what’s happening on the business side of his profession.

“It doesn’t seem like they’ve been talking much, not on the core economics (issues), anyway,” Wellwood said. “I think once they seriously start talking about that and making some moves, then I think we’re going to see if there’s going to be a lockout for the rest of the season or not. But I think that’s still a couple of months away.”

If it is, Wellwood will find that playing under a disciplined, businesslike coach like Murray can only prove beneficial. And Murray thinks he can be better for it, too.

Just as he was hired 18 years ago to take over a Flyers team that had missed the playoffs for five straight years, Murray is taking over a Phantoms team that hasn’t been to the AHL postseason the past three years. It’s not exactly a coincidence.

“You’re trying to win and you’re trying to develop players who are good players; players that become winners and players that become champions,” Murray said. “The main goal is the same, no matter who the coach is.”